Baby Steps
by Grey-Rain-Cloud
Summary: Whoever said Apollo wasn't awesome? After the second Titan war (no Heroes of Olympus) there are some changes, some realizations, and some more (subtler) changes. And it is all because Apollo is Awesome and is finally getting recognized!


**Baby Steps**

After the second Titan war, things at Camp Half-Blood changed gradually—for the better, thankfully. The new cabins—Hecate, Morpheus, Hades, and etcetera—were built and slowly became occupied. All of the unclaimed demi-gods weren't suddenly claimed all at the same time—that would have resulted in a big celebration worthy of the party ponies. The ones that were thirteen and older certainly were claimed in haste, but the twelve and under were left waiting longingly for their thirteenth birthday. The Hermes cabin was still pretty full.

It seemed that though the gods would uphold their oath, it would only be to the barest minimum.

That was why, when a little girl arrived at camp—her name was Cecilia Fletching, she had blond hair, brown eyes, a bright smile and cute dimples—the rest of the unclaimed, as well as the rightful residents of the Hermes cabin, told her right off the hop that she would have to wait until she was thirteen to be claimed by her godly mother or father.

(_"Why?" Cecilia asked sadly, her smile dimming, dimples disappearing, "doesn't my daddy want me?"_

_ Travis and Connor Stoll, Co-Head Councillors of the Hermes cabin, exchanged lost expressions. The new kids didn't usually ask this question out loud until about a week or two into camp, and even then it was less blunt and to-the-point. "Of course he wants you sweetie," Connor knelt in front of the girl, he had always been the more sensitive brother, "but only the Hermes kids are claimed right away, and that's only 'cause either way we would be staying in his cabin."_

_ Cecilia looked at him hopefully. "Maybe my daddy is Hermes!" _

_ Connor looked at the girl and compared her to all of his siblings. She didn't have the mischievous eyes, the upturned eyebrows, or the up-to-no-good smile. "Maybe." Connor said evenly, then smiled in a way that made his eyes sparkle and that made you check your pockets, "Now, how about some of the best ice-cream that you can eat?"_

_ "The best?" Cecilia asked, distracted._

_ Travis, seeing that the mushy therapy session was over, jumped back into the conversation. "You know how people always say that free food tastes better then when you have to buy it?"_

_ Cecilia shook her head._

_ "Well," Travis drawled, "I know for a fact that food—_especially_ ice-cream—tastes even better when it's _stolen_."_)

This was also why almost everyone was surprised when she was claimed the very next day when she was getting archery lessons from Will Solace son of Apollo.

(_Cecilia let the arrow fly, cheering when it hit the outermost ring of her target. She looked up at Will to see him smiling proudly. _

_ He ruffled her hair, saying in his slight country accent that had never quite faded despite being around so many New Yorkers since he was young, "You'll be shooting arrows like a pro in no time with the way you're goin'"_

_ Cecilia beamed, then there was a glow above her, and when she looked up there was a golden lyre, the symbol of Apollo shining brightly. Once it faded, the people at the archery range recovered from their shock._

_ Will displayed a crooked grin, "Guess you'll have to move all your stuff to the Apollo cabin, CeCe. You've just been claimed." Then he slung an arm around her small shoulders and steered her in the direction of the Hermes cabin, where he would help her gather her belongings and then show her around her new home._

_ Cecilia smiled brightly up at him, and Will recognized it as the same elated smile that he had seen his dad—and her dad—wearing whenever he snuck past Zeus' eye to come and visit his cabin full of children, or when he was watching them open a present he had gotten them. Cecilia would get along with her siblings just fine._)

The campers saw a pattern of course—it didn't take a child of Athena to see it—and it became even clearer when James and Gabriel Bowman, nine year old twins, came to camp and were also claimed within the week of their arrival, when they were at the Arts and Craft table.

(_Two identical blond haired, blue eyed boys sat side by side on a picnic table that was full of all kinds of art supplies. They were working on a papier-mâché guitar. The both of them had skipped their other activities—without permission, but it wasn't as if they were doing anything dangerous, so they figured it'd be okay; besides, they couldn't just stop, their guitar was just getting awesome!—and the only others in the Arts and Crafts area were a couple of satyr's who were too busy making a clay model of Pan—the faded Lord of the Wild—to pay much attention to two little boys who weren't supposed to be there._

_ "Get the red paint James." Gabriel ordered his brother._

_ James didn't put up with it. "I thought that we were painting it gold Jasper." He put his hands on his hips and had a stubborn look on his face. Of course, Gabriel's name obviously wasn't Jasper, that was his middle name, but Gabriel had always hated his name and insisted that everyone call him Jasper or they would find a 'nice surprise' when they woke up the next morning. He even introduced himself as Jasper Gabriel Bowman. _

_ "I've changed my mind."_

_ "Well," James said crisply, "I haven't."_

_ They ended up wrestling on the floor for a good five minutes—the stakes being whoever pinned the other first got to choose the color of their papier-mâché guitar. The problem was that they were both so well matched in strength, and they knew what the other would do and knew exactly how to counteract it, so they probably would have kept on going until either one of them got a lucky hold, or they both collapsed from exhaustion. Thankfully, before either of those things happened, a golden lyre appeared over both of their heads simultaneously—and since their heads were so close together, both lyres blended together until it made an odd looking mutant lyre, or perhaps a conjoined twins lyre._

_ Both boys stopped, looked up and grinned smugly at one another. They stood up, and with the satyr's staring at them, fist bumped. _

_ "How about we paint it gold—" Jasper started._

_ "But have red flames going up the sides." James finished._

_ "Awesome." They said together._)

Then there was Summer Anderson, a six year old girl with light-brown-sun-streaked hair in pig-tails and big pale green eyes. She had just come stumbling across the border to Camp and was claimed right away—she didn't have to kill a monster to prove herself or show her prowess with a certain weapon or anything.

(_People noticed pretty fast that there was a six year old girl in a bright yellow sundress coming down Half-Blood Hill. Malcolm from Athena and Miranda from Demeter were the first to notice, followed shortly by Will Solace._

_ "Hey honey," Miranda smiled kindly when they made it to the tired little girl, "where's your parent?" It was almost taboo to say parent_s_, as in plural, around half-bloods._

_ Those pale green eyes filled with tears, "Mommy got into a car accident, and daddy said that she wasn't coming back." Miranda looked almost panicked, but that was nothing on how Malcolm looked. Will stepped forward. _

_ "What's this about your daddy darling?" _

_ This seemed to be the right question, because the little girl's eyes brightened. "Daddy pulled me from the car! Then he took me to a really nice hotel where we stayed the night, and it the morning he gave me this pretty dress," she grabbed both sides of her yellow dress and looked at it lovingly, "and this pretty clip." She pointed to a Celestial Bronze, intricately twisted hair clip that was shaped as a butterfly. All three of the older half-bloods suspected that it turned into a weapon._

_ "What's your name darlin'?" Will asked. "Where'd your daddy go?" He seemed the most comfortable around the little girl, probably because his siblings were mostly around ten, so he took up the role as big brother a lot more._

_ "My names Summer Anderson," she declared proudly, then yawned. Summer held up her arms to Will, who picked her up obligingly and without hesitation, settling her onto his hip. She rested her head on his shoulder sleepily, "You look like my daddy."_

_ That was when the hologram of a lyre appeared over her head, but Summer didn't see it: she was already asleep._)

Apollo suddenly became a way more popular god. The other demi-gods were jealous, sure, but they respected how the god of the sun took responsibility for his children. They liked how it seemed like he was proud of them—just for being themselves, because he didn't wait for them to do something heroic or suicidal in order to be claimed.

When the older campers, the ones who were there before the oath Percy Jackson made the gods make and before the Titan war started, looked back they could remember Apollo kids being claimed in exactly the same way as they were now—so with or without the oath, Apollo had been proud to call his children his own. And they couldn't remember any of the Apollo kids joining the Titan's side at all—almost all of the cabins lost someone to betrayal, but not Apollo.

So the demi-gods sacrificed more food to Apollo… which resulted in the other gods getting less—which does not go unnoticed for long.

(_The Winter Solstice meeting had just concluded, but unlike all the other times where the Olympians would flash out as soon as possible, there was a tension, an unease between most, that kept even the most carefree gods in their place. Hermes had even put George and Martha on vibrate, while Apollo turned his iPod off._

_ "Have any of you noticed…" Athena, who was—as usual—the first one to speak, said slowly, "that the demi-gods have not been," she seemed to weigh her words, as if trying to say something in the best way but not really finding a good way to say it in the first place, "sacrificing to us as much?"_

_ "Yes!" Ares burst out, along with a few others—Demeter, Aphrodite, Zeus._

_ "What's up with that?" Aphrodite asked, totally confused._

_ That set people off, and suddenly the throne room was filled with loud voices suggesting absolutely ridiculous things. It was when Zeus suggested that the demi-gods were planning a mutiny against the gods that some of the people who were not totally freaking out—Hermes and Apollo—decided to intervene. Truthfully, Apollo would have butted in sooner, but he was too flabbergasted by what Athena had said to do much of anything except stare with his jaw hanging open._

_ "What are you guys talking about?" Hermes asked loudly, and surprisingly the noise stopped as everyone turned to the god of thieves. "The demi-gods have been sacrificing the same amount of food. To me at least; what about all of you?" He looked at them expectantly._

_ They went around the room, saying if their numbers of sacrificed food has dropped or not._

_ Zeus: yes._

_ Poseidon: the same._

_ Hades: the same._

_ Ares: yes._

_ Demeter: yes._

_ Aphrodite: yes._

_ Dionysus: the same._

_ Athena: yes._

_ Artemis: the same._

_ Hera: the same. (Which means, like, nothing.)_

_ Hermes: the same._

_ Hephaestus: yes._

_ Then it came to Apollo, who had actually started to get nervous after hearing all of the other gods answers._

_ "Well?" Zeus and Athena asked impatiently at the same time—which was actually pretty creepy._

_ "Um…" Artemis whacked him in the back of his head, urging him to get on with it. "I've actually been getting more sacrifices."_

_ This was obviously not what Artemis was expecting, "W-why?"_

_ "All of the campers are super happy that I claim all of my children."_

_ "We're doing that!" Demeter said. "Are they eating enough cereal?" _

_ Apollo looked exasperated—which didn't happen very often; he was, strangely, one of the more patient gods. "No, that's not what I'm talking about. You're all claiming them when they turn thirteen, but I'm claiming then within the week they're at camp. So all the campers are thanking me for making my kids feel like I'm not using them, and not making them feel like I'm not proud or that I don't love them. They think I'm awesome."_

_ Many stared at the sun god in shock, and those that had been complaining looked torn between ashamed and indignant._)

The gods started claiming their children _a bit_ earlier then thirteen from then on. Baby steps, right?


End file.
